A Provision Shop in the Wet Market: 31 Years Across Three Generations of Women

I am a girl who grew up wandering through the wet market. On any ordinary day I am just another cubicle-bound office worker, but the moment the Spring Festival rolls around, I transform into the “number two” at a provision stall in the wet market.

What kind of place is a wet market? For ordinary people who keep to the natural rhythm of “three meals a day”, it is simply a place to buy fresh food — a small part of an uneventful daily routine. As supermarkets appeared and then online shopping platforms followed, opinions about the wet market multiplied. At first, some said supermarkets were cleaner and tidier, with clearly displayed prices so that no one could “rip you off”. Then the mood shifted again, and people began to appreciate the warmth and bustle of the wet market; consumers in big cities even turned it into a must-visit destination.

Quite unlike these polarised, either-or views, the wet market as I experience it is far more alive, far more complex.

Office Workers Miss the Wet Market

My feelings for the wet market only deepened gradually after I left my hometown.

I grew up in Wuzhou, in Guangxi — the eastern gateway to the province, where Guangxi and Guangdong cultures blend. During the Ming dynasty, it was home to the viceroy’s office for Guangdong and Guangxi. In this small city, you can savour laoyou fen (old-friend noodles), Guilin rice noodles and luosifen (river snail rice noodles), as well as poached chicken, soy-sauce chicken, cheung fun (steamed rice noodle rolls) and Cantonese dim sum, to name a few. I’m sure quite a few of you will have heard of guilinggao (tortoise herbal jelly) — it’s a Wuzhou speciality!

I love my hometown, but it is a small city, and there are no jobs to match my field of study. So after graduating from university in 2022, I chose to move to Wuxi, 1,600 kilometres from home, and begin life in a big city together with my partner.

As an ordinary office worker who doesn’t clock off until six, or even later, leisure time in the evening is precious. The nearest wet market to our neighbourhood is several metro stops away, and by the time we get home, completely drained, we have neither the energy nor the inclination to take a leisurely wander through one.

This kind of urban layout is very different from back home.

Wuzhou is a compact city — the old town is relatively small and densely populated. To make everyday life convenient, every street or neighbourhood has well-established wet markets, never more than a short walk apart.

Wuzhou is also deeply influenced by Cantonese food culture, and people are extremely particular about the ‘freshness’ and “slaughtered-on-the-spot” quality of their ingredients. Many farmers ride three-wheeled motorbikes into town every day to sell fresh produce, so plenty of wet markets are needed to provide the selling space.

The wet markets in Wuzhou’s old town are buzzing with activity in the early morning. Although most of the young people have left for Guangdong to make their way in life, the older residents still keep to the habit of rising early to pick up fresh ingredients at the neighbourhood markets.

And so in this small city, the arrival of large supermarkets and online shopping platforms has not swept the wet markets aside — they remain the primary way locals do their fresh-food shopping.

But here in Wuxi, so far from home, all I can do to get dinner on the table sooner is squeeze in a quick order during work breaks on online platforms like Dingdong Maicai or Xiaoxiang Supermarket. It was then — when I realised I could no longer just pop downstairs to buy chicken and duck slaughtered the very same day, region-specific condiments, and fresh sweet potato leaves and Cantonese choy sum — that my longing for the vibrant, bustling, abundantly stocked wet markets back home truly began to grow.

A Provision Shop Across Three Generations

The wet market I miss is called Yijing Market. It has all the warmth and bustle you could wish for — fruits, fresh vegetables, fresh meat, seafood, prepared foods, dried goods, staples and cooking essentials… if you need it, they’ll have it. My mum runs a provision shop right there in the market.

Ever since I was little, I’ve been minding the shop at the market alongside my mum. What we sell is quite the mishmash — on top of oil, salt, sauces and vinegar, we stock all sorts of ingredients sold by weight. A single product category can have several brands; the range is so vast I could spend all day counting and never finish. So this little shop is always incredibly busy. People typically finish their fresh-food shopping, lug their big bags and small bags over, and then come to pick up their seasonings and extras.

The stallholders at the market are regulars at our shop, too. Some of them head home at midday for a nap, while others cook right there at their stalls — if they run short of any seasoning, they’ll pop over to us. Every lunchtime, the whole market fills with the aroma of home-cooked food.

Once I was grown up, I would go and help mind the shop every Spring Festival. On any ordinary day I’m just another cubicle-bound office worker, but the moment I go home for the New Year, I transform into the “number two” at the market’s provision shop.

Eating is a serious business in life, and getting the seasonings right is the make-or-break part of a good meal. Different customers have different preferences when it comes to ingredients and condiments, so people don’t just pick up what they need and walk out — they’ll quiz you on all sorts of things: “What type of flour should I use to make that style of dim sum?” “What can I cook with soybean paste?” — and so on.

“Are your century eggs any good — have you actually eaten one?”

I forced myself to reply: “Of course our century eggs are delicious!”

The old lady shot back: “Hah — well, of course you’d say your own are good! Have you actually eaten them, or are you just saying so?”

“I — my mum has had them…” I really am hopeless with words; in the end it was my mum who came to the rescue.

My mum is remarkable — she can answer every question without a moment’s hesitation, calmly laying out the pros and cons of each brand’s condiments for the customer.

Don’t be fooled by my mum’s calm, effortless ease these days — she used to be little more than a helper in this shop. The provision shop was originally set up by my nan, back in 1995; the shop and the market opened their doors on the very same day. Customers used to recognise my nan as the boss and always turned to her with whatever they needed. Back then, many things in the shop were sold by weight, soy sauce included. There weren’t nearly so many soy sauce brands back then, and soy sauce could even be bought loose by weight — customers would bring all kinds of empty drink bottles to fill up.

As time went on and the condiment market evolved, people no longer needed to fill bottles with soy sauce. The market itself has been through several rounds of renovation and shop relocations. Our shop’s footprint shrank to almost a third of its original size, and my nan reached retirement age. My mum took on the heavy responsibility of running this little provision shop.

Labour, from Dawn to Dusk

If a city were a living organism, the wet market would surely be the first organ to stir awake each day. When customers walk in, all they see are the stallholders standing behind an abundant spread of produce — little do they know that those hands have been busy since the small hours. That busyness can last twelve hours or more before the day’s labour is finally done.

In the old days, when my nan ran the shop, the provision shop would open at six or seven in the morning. She’d unseal the bags of loose grains and flours one by one, position items in the most visible spots, and restock anything that sold out. Even then, she’d tell you, there were always people waiting at the door for their condiments, even earlier than she was. Once my mum took over, opening time was pushed back by an hour.

From eight to eleven in the morning is the busiest stretch at the wet market, and most of the shoppers are middle-aged or elderly. There’s also a designated open space set aside for itinerant stallholders — they only set up in the mornings, but their prices are incredibly low. You can get mangetout for just one yuan a jin (500 g).

After twelve noon, the market falls eerily quiet — everyone heads home for lunch and an afternoon nap. Some stallholders are no exception; the cooked-food stalls won’t reopen until four in the afternoon. Though customers are few in number, we’re not free to rest ourselves — it’s stock-taking time.

Since the shop has no space left for stock of any kind, we don’t have a fixed ordering schedule. Whether it’s oil, salt, sauces, vinegar, or a 25 kg bag of flour, if something runs low we call that brand’s sales representative and have them arrange a delivery. The city is small, so deliveries tend to be quick. The reps also pop in regularly to scope out the market, see what competitors the shop is carrying, or pitch their latest products.

After four in the afternoon, the crowds return in another surge, lasting until six. It’s only then that we can ease into tidying up and getting ready to close the stall. But the customers never quite stop coming during the closing-up process — there’s always someone rushing over at the eleventh hour for a seasoning we’ve almost run out of, and my mum is always patient enough to unpack the goods she’s just tidied away, all over again. Once the dinner rush is past — around seven or eight in the evening — we can finally close the stall and head home.

Don’t assume you can relax once you’re through the front door. Our provision shop will portion out practically everything into the smallest possible units to sell — tonight it’s repacking white sesame seeds, tomorrow it’s Tom yum spice mix, the night after that it’s custard powder. So after twelve hours on your feet, the evening at home brings more prep work, and it’s usually past ten before you can truly call it a night. Then the alarm goes for half past seven the next morning, and the relentless churn begins again.

“Guess You Like”: More Than an Algorithm

Many customers keep coming back to our little provision shop, not just because we stock such a wide range of products, but because of my mum’s sincere way of making people feel welcome. Last Spring Festival, during the short spell I helped mind the shop, I noticed several regulars bringing friends along to buy things — and they only confirmed it was their usual little shop when they spotted my mum behind the counter.

Most online grocery platforms have a “Guess You Like” feature that guesses what dish you might be cooking from what you’ve bought and suggests ingredients you still need. Well, my mum has long since mastered that trick herself — with a far more human touch.

She can remember what the regulars always come in for. Before a customer even opens their mouth, she’s already slid the goods across to them.

“The same brand of soy sauce as usual, right?”

“That’s right, that’s right! It’s the one I love cooking with — you really do remember everything.”

Which customer wouldn’t love being remembered like that? That feeling of being remembered, of truly mattering to someone, is something no algorithm’s “Guess You Like” could ever offer.

She also knows the recipes for all manner of cakes, pastries and dim sum. Buy some peeled mung beans, and she’ll know you’re making a large pork-stuffed zongzi (leaf-wrapped sticky rice dumpling), then tell you the shop also has five-spice powder, dried reed leaves and glutinous rice. Buy glutinous rice flour to make tangyuan (glutinous rice balls), and she’ll tell you the shop also has sesame, red-bean-paste filling and lotus-seed-paste filling — and casually add that a splash of rice flour makes them chewier.

So many customers head straight for our shop the moment they step into the market. “Boss, I’m making a beef brisket pot tonight — three jin’s worth. Can you pack up some spices for me? I’ll swing by to pick them up!” That’s how it goes: one customer tosses out a few words, then dashes off to do the rest of their shopping.

These sincere exchanges perhaps don’t match many people’s negative impressions of wet markets — the short measure and the price gouging. I can’t speak for markets elsewhere, but in my experience a wet market thrives on repeat custom, not one-off transactions, so there’s no sense in doing anything that would turn customers cold.

Perseverance

at the Wet Market and the Provision Shop

In truth, for a long stretch after my studies took over in secondary school, I barely set foot in the shop any more. Not until university, with its long holidays, did I go back to help out. By then, I hadn’t run into any of the market stallholders in ages, and yet I could still pick out all those familiar faces: the three sisters who sold fish, the husband-and-wife team selling beef, the auntie at the cooked-food stall, and so on.

But they couldn’t recognise me any more. Only when I was helping out in the shop would they notice — “Hey, who’s this new face here?” “Is this your daughter?” — conversations that have played out over and over again. Then they’d look at each other and marvel at how they’d all been holding on in this market for so many years.

All told, from the day my nan first set up shop to now, with me occasionally dropping in to help, this provision shop — one that has run through three generations of my family’s lives — is 31 years old. So what does the future hold? We haven’t really had a deep conversation about it. I plan to move back to the Guangdong and Guangxi region, but it’s very unlikely I’d return to my hometown to take over the shop. Once my mum grows old, this little provision shop will probably have fulfilled its mission.

In fact, business at Wuzhou’s wet markets is well off its best days across the board. One residential neighbourhood next door to a market was converted into a tourist attraction; so many residents moved away that the market has been shrinking ever since. Its seafood section was demolished and has stood empty the whole time, and some of the independent vendors have migrated to busier markets elsewhere. With fewer stalls and less variety on offer, nearby residents would rather drive further afield to bigger, more comprehensive markets.

Fortunately, Yijing Market sits right in the heart of the busy district and is still going strong. Every Spring Festival I still get to savour those days minding the shop at home, recording and soaking up the genuine warmth between people at the wet market. Just like when I was a child, eyes wide, watching the endless stream of people flowing in and out — and feeling that safe, snug sense of being enveloped by the market’s vibrant, buzzing life.

All images in this article are provided by the author

Editor: Yuyang

Layout: Xiaoshu

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